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Conversations with the Inspiring Darcie Smith

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Darcie Smith.

Darcie, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was the kid who collected wildlife species cards like baseball cards. I used to organize them alphabetically, then reorganize them by taxonomic hierarchy. I climbed trees, played in thickets, and preferred to stay home with the horses than socialize with classmates. As an artistically inclined youth who loved quiet time in nature, I hadn’t a clue growing up as to how to use my interests to become a self-sufficient adult. After consulting with my family, a student counselor, and an aptitude test, I agreed to the pragmatic decision to stay in-state and study mechanical engineering at The University of Colorado.

I felt very lost that first year, wading through the motions of completing classes and wandering the art building halls longingly, admiring works of other students. It wasn’t until I ran into my high school English teacher on a visit back home that the lightbulb turned on. “Engineering? I thought you’d be studying art somewhere in Europe,” he said bewildered. The idea sounded impossibly wonderful, but suddenly because someone saw it as a fit for me, I saw myself there too.

I returned to school, switched out of Engineering to a double degree in Art History and Business, and found my stride. I received a small scholarship, was accepted to an upperclassmen internship with the Denver Art Museum as a sophomore and was asked to stay on another year with the museum. The opportunity primed me for acceptance into a small study abroad program where I spent a summer in Paris learning about the modern art masters in front of the originals—the city as my classroom. There I discovered I had a knack for planning trips, researching, and was exposed to travel planning as a career. I also discovered I loved experiencing other cultures through the lens of art history more than time spent in museums.

Upon my return to University, I decided to shift my focus to tourism, which was when I found a summer internship in Boulder working for The World Outdoors, a hiking and multisport adventure travel company. I also took a second internship with a tour operator in Longmont, Great Expeditions Travel, which specialized in scuba diving, safari, and horseback riding vacations. At the end of both internships, I was hired by both companies. I completed the Wilderness First Responder and Open Water Diving certifications and spent my summers guiding naturalist tours through the United States and Canada; back home I cut my teeth in travel planning. With unbridled enthusiasm, I joined journalists on dive expeditions in Colombia, attended conferences in Fiji, explored New Zealand, hiked through breathtaking natural landscapes such as the Grand Canyon, and experienced the wonders of safari.

My interests in natural science, cultural history, immersion in nature, and an appreciation for exceptional guiding converged in Africa, where I also discovered the significance of supporting travel that contributes to meaningful conservation and uplifts the local communities. I continue to find opportunities to contribute through my work as the Director of Safari Planning for The Wild Source and have spent the last decade traveling the continent. Throughout the journey, I haven’t lost my love of art. I continue painting and use my travels as inspiration for my work.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Despite having incredibly supportive parents, freedom to explore my interests, and having been raised with the value that strong is beautiful, developing an ear for my inner voice did not come easily. Learning to follow my intuition, disappoint others, and not fall into obedience were lessons learned through trial by fire. Early on, I experienced age and gender discrimination from people who doubted that I was capable of being a young lady in a position of leadership.

As a hiking guide, I was responsible for the entertainment and wellbeing of twelve strangers for a full week, many of whom were a generation or two older than me. I discovered that if I didn’t assert myself as a knowledgeable authority right away, the questions and trust would quickly be directed to my male co-guide. So, I made a point on the first morning of the first day of the tour to drive the van, which subtly challenged any preconceptions about my competence. Some people hid their discomfort in the form of a joke. “Are you even old enough to have your license!? Ha!” One woman explained at the end of a week hiking in the Grand Canyon that I was the age of her son, who still lived in her basement and apologized for not taking me seriously from the beginning. I didn’t have the luxury of not knowing the answer to their questions, missing a turn, or making a poor judgement. Knowing there would be doubt challenged me to research harder, volunteer facts, and fight my inclination to fall into a passive role. I doubted their doubts, and in doing so ended up growing the radius of my own comfort zone.

It seems that the individuals who choose to wallow in negativity never keep it to themselves. However my exposure to them has helped me to develop a thicker skin and a conviction to choose positivity. Through my work as a guide and a travel planner, I meet talented, turned-on, positive people. I work in tandem with fellow guides, both men and women, who I love and feel supported by. I thrive in healthy ecosystems that encourage people to try, ask questions, and sometimes fail. On trips, I love spending quality time with my older generations who share their life perspectives. In moments that challenge us, they reveal their choice to embrace positivity. I think of the 83-year-old woman who I guided in the Canadian Rockies and claimed she was bionic because of her artificial knees or the widower who travels on safari in loving support of his wife’s conservation legacy with a kidney transplant that he calls his gift. Experiencing other cultures as well as the awesome magnitude of nature is an invaluable gift. Travel has shaped my awareness of my privilege and serves as an acute reminder to keep things in perspective. I was lucky to find mentors and friends who helped me to see my own potential. Finding the people who are turned on to life allows others to seek out that vitality within themselves; the people who embrace curiosity and failure as an element to the learning process are people who liberate us from our own inhibitions and finding those people can be life-changing. As a board member for the local nonprofit, Elevate Her, I hope to contribute to young women finding those friendships and mentorships that have been so instrumental in my life.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into The Wild Source story. Tell us more about your art.
My most treasured moments of my career have been while traveling in nature, and I love the vicarious reward of experiencing a familiar place through the eyes of a person who is seeing it for the first time. I try to bring this into my work as a travel planner as well as an artist. As a planner, I take time to get to know the individuals I am working with and put myself in their shoes to match them with the right pace, locations, and accommodations. I take their experience very personally, which is an advantage as well as a curse—what I lose in efficiency, I gain in authenticity.

As an artist, I hope to capture the vibrant but peaceful moments in nature, the moments of my life that I value so dearly. At the root, I am most motivated by the power of adventure travel to contribute to conservation. As such, we are very intentional in our partnerships to optimize our client’s investment not only in a top wildlife experience but with the operators who contribute the greatest positive impact. Unfortunately, with the global setbacks from Ebola and COVID-19, we have objective data that shows what happens when the last remaining protected wild places lose funding for that protection. This great pause has also given us an opportunity to consider our values and what we would prefer to prioritize moving forward. I am hopeful that nature is taken less for granted in the future, prioritizing opportunities for all people to access nature regularly. As Jane Goodall says in her book, 40 Years at Gombe, “Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help. Only if we help, we shall be saved.”

Looking back on your childhood, what experiences do you feel played an important role in shaping the person you grew up to be?
Humor has been the undercurrent of my upbringing. My parents are polar opposites in their delivery of humor—my father uses his quiet demeanor to surprise and make every word count. My mother has an irreverent and quick wit that provided many moments during my adolescence of pride and mortification. Humor taught me to bring playfulness into my pursuits, seek out the joyfulness in others, and not to take myself too seriously.

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